Commemorating February 22nd, 2011
Today is the third anniversary of the earthquake that devastated my home city of Christchurch on Tuesday February 22nd, 2011.
I must admit that I am trying to move on from those events, even though it’s difficult with the the after-effects still very evident in every aspect of life: physical and emotional, psychological and social.
So no big post for today, but I did chart the earthquake and its aftermath through the Earthquake Reports and Earthquake Poems (just click on the links or look under categories in the right hand sidebar.)The anniversary has also been commemorated here on the blog for the past two years:
22 February 2012: Commemorating February 22nd, 2011
22 February 2013: Commemorating February 22nd, 2011: “Disintegration”
Sometimes I want to talk about it, others my feelings are more like these lines from Barbara Strang’s poem, For A Song:
“My father had been there,
didn’t talk about it
he withdrew fat volumes
of war histories from the library
to find what it was about.”
Except that I doubt any history could explain what in my own Indifferent Planet I refer to as one of:
“…the random acts of violence
of an indifferent planet”
although they may cover material similar to what I sought to convey in these lines from This Will Be Us:
“…And yet,
how could that future observer
feel more
than a passing wonder,
a flash of empathy …
.
… any more than we do now
when looking at old records
of past disasters:
the great pandemic, say,
that followed World War 1,
or the Wahine storm —
and only fleetingly imagine
the reality that these people —
flickers on a newsreel,
stills in a frame —
experienced, lived through,
endured.”
Kia kaha, Christchurch.
Thank you for sharing these, Helen
Thank you, Paul.